2015 NFL Secondary Market Week 1 Recap

2015 NFL WEEK 1 SHOWCASES GREAT RESALE ACTION

The 2015 NFL Week 1 Kickoff with some amazing resale action. Not only did the Pittsburgh-New England game go gang-busters and hit an amazing ARP amid NE Quarterback Tom Brady’s reinstatement, but the Green Bay-Chicago meeting at Soldier Field followed with a conceptually better performance. GB-CHI had more inventory on the marketplace (2,507 SVG), and really hammered away at the secondary with a $282.75 ARP – $377.71 MLP. Several of these numbers are main factors in how the NFL spread around the victories, attempting to hide some of the worst resale offerings where no one would be looking (we still see you, Carolina-Jacksonville).

While the CLE-NYJ MCAP was huge, don’t be shocked at this, because a lot of that inventory didn’t go anywhere but into the garbage bins. More on that later. But looking at Jerry’s World, where the New York Giants defied good clock management, the Cowboys’ resale cleaned up with a $192.56 ARP – $238.14 MLP – creating a $8,064,716.24 MCAP. Considering that a $4,996,678 BASE was also the highest for the Sunday Night Football match-up, it made for a great measurement of protection that brokers wouldn’t get burned by a race to the bottom.

When brokers collectively miss hard, it is a head scratcher. Notice that the 44% ARP-MLP Spread for the Dolphins-Redskins is absolutely out of wack with what the actual resale became. A $103.24 ARP that was 11th overall for NFL Week 1, and yet, because RGIII and Dan Snyder create so much interest, even when neither are playing on the field, it somehow drives up the 79,000-seat FedEx Field sales higher. In reality, for where it should have been positioned, the ARP-MLP Spread would have been better served dropping to the Detroit Lions-San Diego Chargers Level, simply by ARP and MLP value. But alas, not every asking price is what the buyers collectively value it at, and this is a prime example.

AROUND THE NFL SECONDARY: WEEK 1 HIGHLIGHTS

PITT-NE HITS $407 ARP AMID BRADY RE-INSTATEMENT

Tom Brady just made the brokers really happy if they had been able to hold enough inventory until after his re-instatement announcement. An outstanding $407 ARP that served as the highest for all of NFL Week 1 (Next best, GB-CHI sat at $325). Let’s look at the numbers for a second though, given the Sept. 4, 2015 decision to nullify the 4-game suspension that Brady was about to serve:

While it was a big match-up anyway between two great teams, by Sept. 5 & Sept. 6, all three lines (ARP, MLP, GIP) jumped higher up with the expectation of interest and demand. A $522 ARP on Sept. 7 threw a shock to the system, as the asking price from resellers collectively was actually lower on average ($488 MLP), and thus created a correction the following day where MLP leap-frogged to a $531 asking price.

This caused a fluctuation with the ARP – hitting a $438.58 mark from Sept. 4 to Sept. 10, throwing it $31.58 above the overall ARP felt by the marketplace. Because with Brady, all things are no longer simple, and the Patriots fans can finally name their starting quarterback again.

And while the resale was amazing, the last time that the Steelers came into Gillette Stadium, Nov. 3, 2013, the secondary market boomed as well. It’s a key match-up on the NFL’s roster anyway, but hitting a $264.94 ARP mark is nothing to sneeze at.

Notice the way that the MCAP united into an almost tie with the LMC. That means that the average resale that the buyers were willing and did pay actually forced brokers to raise their prices, because they weren’t high enough. Truly an amazing thing to watch, especially with a BASE of $2,922,940 that wasn’t even close to being a sell-off.

That’s why the MLP-GIP Chasm was 755% and the APR-GIP was 148%. Nothing was being taken for granted, and that inventory still remaining on the market during that Sept. 4 – Sept. 10 stretch wasn’t a lot (1,519 SVG), so it leads one to wonder how many tickets were distributed during the summer, when the NFL’s suspension of Brady looked to be a solid case instead of a withering vine.

IND-BUF NOTCHES $132 ARP

The Buffalo Bills yielded their highest ARP on the secondary market in the last three years for a home opener on Sept. 13, 2015 – they notched a $132 ARP for the Indianapolis Colts on the secondary. It was also the highest ARP in the last three years for any home game hosted by the Bills (including those in Toronto).

First, let’s pay a little respect to what an ARP average for home games looks like for the Bills in general:

This doesn’t mean its anything but an outlier because the Bills were hosting the 2014 AFC Title game Deflate Gate participants. But having a good head start of $39 ARP above average should be a nice trend that hopefully will continue for resellers moving forward.

During the set period of the 6DE, things are always more interesting on the resale market when it comes to NFL. The ARP is much lower, tickets move a lot faster, and the MLP is usually off-put by what the GIP has to ask for. The Bills’ game was a perfect test case for this, not disappointing at all.

Notice how the ARP drops to $115.37 during the 6DE period. That’s a good sampling of suggesting that the majority of tickets were moved long before it came close to gametime. Also, there isn’t near the amount of inventory available at this period 4,613 as the Bills averaged in 2014 or 2013.

Why does this matter? Because it affects how the entire secondary moved along in selling tickets through the various distribution channels. During the 6DE period, the MCAP was $3,885,229.36, with an average amount of inventory sold per day going at $555,032.77. Considering how the BASE value was $3,467,680 – it shows that the ARP was really nabbed at the GIP price. More on that, in a moment.

But here’s what is interesting about this game – resellers didn’t accurately know how to price this game, especially as it got closer. Notice the MLP-GIP Chasm: 274% of a difference. That wouldn’t be that bad, had the ARP-GIP Divide not shown that buyers’ ARP ended up being only 9% above what the GIP was asking for. This is why the Inventory Hot Spread of $246,988.52 against a Cold Spread value of $306,638.43 for the IND-BUF game shows a lot of importance, as the game drew closer, the inventory.

This brings us to some of the variables that make up the entire resale 6DE period. When you factor in how the ARP went, it increased $72.64 from 6DE to 0DE. The problem is that resellers tried to pushed the MLP up in concert with that buy, up to $78 MLP from 6DE-0DE. So, even when the buyers were hitting various margins, the brokers lifted their asking price. And it didn’t go well for them as GIP stayed stable at a third of the asking price increase of the MLP.

This suggests that there may have been a lot of late bloomers coming to the resale party. That they simply starting boosting the asking ticket price well beyond the demand, excited as the game started to come closer.

CLE-NYJ SHOWS A LOT OF DEADWOOD LOSSES

That may be a $8,336,964.74 MCAP you’re seeing for the CLE-NYJ game in Week 1, but the majority of it went right out the door. Completely a ticket flooded situation. Sure, you may see a $86.90 ARP, but the 13,198 SVG during the 6DE showed that no one was really buying in droves. Way too much inventory, way too few of buyers to come to the game, even if Johnny Football actually got in the game and threw a touchdown by halftime.

The Inventory Cold Spread is a huge indicator that the entire resale stank while losing $1,237,042.79 amid a 182% MLP-GIP Chasm that held back nothing. Heck, Johnny Manziel starting in Week 2 is more of a sure thing than the Week 1 resale against the New York Jets. Yuck.

This resale did offer up, overall, a better return than the last time that Browns came to the Meadowlands, back in 2013, when the $65.82 ARP amid 19,000 greeted resellers who were likely dumping off their Christmas game tickets as soon as possible to gain any type of profit for yet another bad, dull Jets season.